Halloween 2014

We love Halloween at our house.  I love seeing the excitement in my kids' faces when we bring out the decorations and do our family traditions for this holiday.

A few years ago I made this count down calendar and I bring it out every October.  Each day the kids take turns putting up a magnet as we count down the days until Halloween.

I painted 31 square wood chips from Hobby Lobby, decorated each one with a Halloween sticker and glued a magnet to the back.  The magnet board was from Target.  Using mod podge I decorated it with scrapbook paper, stickers and 31 circles for each day of the month.  Here's another view:

We made special treat bags for our neighbors and friends:

We filled cheap disposable gloves (found in the cleaning supplies aisle in Target) with candies, including Smarties for each finger, tied them closed with ribbon, then slipped a plastic spider ring on one of the fingers.  My kids loved making these!

Our front porch was decorated with pumpkins from the farmer's market.  I have never had Cinderella shaped pumpkins before and I love them.  So cute!  I simply placed smaller pumpkins on top and they are flat enough that they stay put.  To fill in the rest of my urns, I cut a garland from Hobby Lobby in half and wrapped it around the pumpkin, then secured it in the dirt with u-shaped nails.  I missed snapping a picture of my urn on the other side of my front door - that one has a blue Cinderella pumpkin in it.

Our Halloween was quite chilly and windy, but it did not stop us from enjoying every minute.  The kids ran from house to house to keep warm and went trick or treating for over an hour.  My daughter dressed as Hermione from Harry Potter and my son was Darth Vader.  Another fun Halloween night for the books!

Pumpkin carving tips

Tonight we carved pumpkins and it was so much fun!  The kids had a ball.  They designed their own jack-o-lanterns and for the first time we let them do the carving, too.  Here are a few tips ~

Tip #1: use a Magic Eraser sponge to clean up the outside of your pumpkin!

First the kids played around with some design ideas using paper and pencil.  When they were happy with what they came up with, they drew the designs on their pumpkins with crayon.  After they were done carving, there were still crayon marks on the pumpkin.  We tried wiping it off with a damp paper towel, but that didn't work.  Then we tried the Magic Eraser - it worked great!


Tip #2: use a drill to carve your pumpkin!

My husband used his electric drill to make a design on one of the pumpkins.  As you can see, it spells out BOO.  He made each letter by drilling lots of holes in the pattern of the letters, using the biggest drill bit he had.  It took about the same amount of time as carving the traditional way.  However, be warned that this is messy.  The drill went right through the pumpkin very easily, but it seemed to make it extra juicy!  You might not want to use a fancy or expensive drill for this, since it will get pumpkin guts on it!

Tip #3: use a flashlight instead of candles to light up your jack-o-lantern!

We tried lighting the BOO pumpkin up with candles, but because the holes are small-ish (about the width of a number 2 pencil), we needed something brighter - a powerful flashlight works great for this!  Just turn on your flashlight and position it inside your jack-o-lantern.  We propped the flashlight up on a small box so that it would shine out at the angle we wanted.

I will try to get some better pictures of all of our pumpkins over the next few days.  Stay tuned!

Just popping in!

My parents have been visiting us this week.  It has been wonderful to have them here and we have been spending a lot of family time together, therefore, I have had no free time for blogging.

Tonight my husband and I are taking advantage of the free babysitting and heading to the movies to see this:

This weekend I will hopefully have time to tackle some of these organizing projects I have been lagging behind on!  Happy weekend!

Clutter challenge ~ days 20 and 21

For a few days, I was feeling good about the progress I was making decluttering.  But, once again, I have fallen behind.  I suppose a really messy "before" makes the "after" even more good, though, doesn't it?

My office and master closet continue to be works in progress.  The truth is I have not been making them a priority the past couple days.  When I do have a spare moment, I would rather curl up with a book than go through my old things and make decisions.  Yes, I am procrastinating!

I know it will feel good to have my office and closet nice and organized, but what I have also come to realize is that I must make maintenance of these areas a daily task.  I need to get these areas to a good starting point, then maintaining them will be much easier and faster.

Clutter challenge ~ my desk

My office is a room in our house that was supposed to be our formal dining room.  We really don't have a need for a formal dining room, so this room has evolved from a playroom to office.  My kids use it, too, and my desk has become a catch all for things that don't have a home.  It can easily become messy in one afternoon and requires constant upkeep.

Here is how my desk looked earlier this week ~ before photo:

It is so overwhelming and frustrating because important papers often get buried in the piles on my desk.  I hate that feeling of not being able to find something that I need.  I waste a lot of time looking for things!

And here is my desk this afternoon ~ after photo:

I still have a lot of stuff on my desk.  It still is cluttered, but it is improving.  I will keep working on it!  I really need to tackle the entire room so that I can move more things off of the desk and store them.  I will share more photos of my office in a future post.  The entire room needs a good cleaning and decluttering!

Sources:
The desk lamp is from IKEA and so are the curtains, which I stenciled with fabric paint.  I found the desk at a local antique store for a steal - one of my most favorite purchases ever.

Touches of fall

My fall wreath ~ made with burlap and fabric flowers and a mini burlap banner:

This bread bowl was my grandmother's.  It sits on my kitchen table right now and I love seeing it every day and thinking of her.  I fill it with different decorations for each season.  Right now it has pine cones, mini pumpkins and a crow from Dollar Tree:

I made the red velvet pumpkin and used a real pumpkin stem that I saved and dried from one of our pumpkins last year:

Five on Friday ~ Star Wars birthday edition

It's Friday!  My favorite day of the week!  I am linking up with Five on Friday, hosted by Darci, April, Christina and Natasha.

This week I am sharing some Star Wars related birthday ideas.  My son's 8th birthday is coming up next week and we have been busy preparing.  Like many boys this age, my son is obsessed with all things Star Wars and that will be the theme of his party.

ONE

I found Star Wars plates and napkins at Party City.  They are sold out online but luckily my local store had them in stock.


TWO

My son is also obsessed with Legos.  He has been talking about the AT- AT Walker set for months.  The best price I found was on Target.com ($10 cheaper than the price in stores and also cheaper than Lego.com).  I have never spent this much on Legos before.  Is anyone else amazed at the prices of these sets?  They are marketing geniuses!


THREE

These cakes I found on Pinterest look amazing!

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FOUR

We have several of these Lego books already.  They come with a mini-figure and the pages are filled with all kinds of Star Wars facts.  My son loves studying them and they have inspired many Lego creations.

FIVE

In past years, I have loved making Halloween costumes for my kids.  It is so creative and fun for me, but this year my son really wants to be Darth Vader and after doing a little online research, I decided it would be simpler and cheaper in the long run (after adding up the cost of supplies and my time) to buy the costume this year.  Once again, Target to the rescue.  (This is not an affiliate post - I love Target and shop there regularly!)  The costume arrived in the mail this week and he has been playing with it ever since and perfecting his Darth Vader voice!

Enjoy the weekend!